That Blasted Catalog

One of the oldest and most twisted of the scraps that one can find on the web is the story of the Incunabula Catalog. I'm not sure exactly how old it is, but the catalog is reported to date back to BBS's back in the early 90's. And I've found, what look to be, logs from old BBS's that are now on the web, and sure enough the catalog is listed in some of these.

One of the first summaries of the story that I came across is at Technoccult.net. A quick look through there shows that the story is long and twisted, and makes the Illuminatus Trilogy look like a children's tale.

On 8/9/01 the following message appeared:

Open letter to conspiracy community

Nick and I decided today to publicly announce in the near future that the Ong's Hat Project has now concluded. We will be contacting Peter L. Wilson as well and see if he'd like to make a statement. I think it would still make a good book from a cultural anthropology perspective, your call.

My program has finished running and I am being recalled from duty. I think we were successful in laying the groundwork for the coming change. The gateways are open now.

I am glad to finally be myself again: 7:37 PM PST.

PS: This is not a joke.

The Real Joe Matheny

AKA/ Michael Kelly

Ong's Hat Tantric Egg Research Center

was a necessary ruse for deflecting

attention from our real project--

to open up your conduits, brother and sisters,

to rip off the confining condom of language and

to Fuck Nature Unprotected.

Doctor Jabir

Public Relations

Quantum Tantra

Huh? I think I was mind controlled...

What eBook?

Joseph Matheny

Incunabula Research Center

Fuck Off!

Peter L. Wilson

AKA

Hakim Bey

Don't, don't!

Don't unplug me!

EmoryBot 3.0

(unplugged)

Permission to repost

Copyleft 2001

Personally, I found the catalog right before the end. I didn't even know that the story had ended until a year or so later. Through the catalog I found the MST/MOCA, quantum theory, chaos theory, chaos magick, and all kinds of other little headfucks. I never took the story completely seriously. I knew it was a joke, or at least I told myself it was. At the time though I was experimenting a lot with reality and belief systems. And now and then I would believe in the catalog. I would believe that it did exist and that the travel cults were real. It was a fun excersise that expanded my mind in new directions.

I do not think the catalog's meme will ever fully die. I think it will bop around the fringe, occasionally being picked up by new comers who's eyes are wide and are willing to experiment with anything. What I'm afraid of is the jadedness of the fringe. The feeling of "you're still playing with that old meme?" May be it's just me, but as I turned things around in my head it was a feeling that I couldn't shake. I still can't. May be it's just in my head though.

Links:

The Eggroom at Dark Planet. There are some links in there that may keep the story alive. I need to hunt through them.

Frequency Edition 2001-2012. It's probably just best to hunt through this on your own.

Stare: incuBLOGula. The new life of the old incunabula.org. A site started by Joseph Matheny to document the catalog. This was the original vortex of this mad little story. I need to poke through the site and see how much of the old documents are still available on the site.

Some Interesting pictures. The site appears to be DW Cooper's.